[solved] Where & what bash env file, Mac OS?

Hi!
I wanted to simplify my bash prompt, so I edited my etc/bashrc file. I thought this was the file that would override any other env files. When I opened it, I saw that the way it was setup was not what my prompt looked like, although I forget exactly what was there. But i edited it the way I wanted it
and saved it. I quit and restarted the Terminal, but my prompt hadn't changed. I looked at the environment and saw that the prompt was set entirely differently than what was originally in the /etc/bashrc file, or what I changed it to:
So I assumed it must be getting it's environmental variables from some other file. But I don't have any kind of bash files in my home dir, such as .bash_profile, (except .bash_history).
At this point I should mention that I'm using Mac OS 10.6, and the directory setup is a little different in some cases than standard unix.

My question is, where is bash ultimately getting its env variables from, and where might I find this file?

Also, is there a way to write directly to the bash environment from the terminal, such as when you add a directory to your PATH? If so, how should that look?
TIA!

---------- Post updated at 03:33 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:26 PM ----------

Nevermind, it's the ~/.profile file.